The history of YouTube is a relatively short one, but a very interesting one! YouTube has been around since 2005, but a lot has changed since then. From being a relatively unknown site, to producing mass hits like “Gangnam Style“, YouTube has become the third most visited website on the internet, and the worlds second biggest search engine.In this infographic, you’ll be taken through a short and brief history of YouTube.

Estimated read time: 3 minutes

For those that don’t like infographics much, here is a list a facts about the history of YouTube:

April 6th In 2006, he uploaded a video of the six-minute performance to YouTube. The clip received 70 million views in under 8 months.

During the summer of 2006, YouTube was one of the fastest growing sites on the Web, uploading more than 65,000 new videos and delivering 100 million video views per day in July. It was ranked the fifth most popular website on Alexa, far out pacing even MySpace’s rate of growth.

On October 9, 2006, it was announced that the company would be purchased by Google for US$1.65 billion in stock.

2006 Time magazine featured a YouTube screen with a large mirror as its annual ‘Person of the Year’

It is estimated that in 2007 YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000.

YouTube was awarded a 2008 Peabody Award and cited for being “a ‘Speakers’ Corner’ that both embodies and promotes democracy”.

In December 2009, Entertainment Weekly placed YouTube on its end-of-the-decade “best-of” list.

In January 2010, YouTube introduced an online film rentals service, which is currently available only to users in the US, Canada and the UK. The service offers over 6,000 films.

On March 31, 2010, the YouTube website launched a new design, with the aim of simplifying the interface and increasing the time users spend on the site.

According to May 2010 data published by market research company comScore, YouTube was the dominant provider of online video in the United States, with a market share of roughly 43 percent and more than 14 billion videos viewed during May.

Starting in 2010 and continuing to the present, Alexa ranked YouTube as the third most visited website on the Internet, behind Google and Facebook.

In April 2011, James Zern, a YouTube software engineer, revealed that 30 percent of videos accounted for 99 percent of views on the site.

In November 2011, the Google+ social networking site was integrated directly with YouTube and the Chrome web browser, allowing YouTube videos to be viewed from within the Google+ interface.

In 2012, YouTube said that roughly 60 hours of new videos are uploaded to the site every minute, and that around three quarters of the material comes from outside the U.S. The site has eight hundred million unique users a month.

January 2012, More than four billion videos viewed daily around the world. An hour of video is uploaded every second.

Jul 15, 2012 – PSY uploads Gangnam Style

On December 4, 2012, YouTube relaunched its design and layout which is very similar to the mobile and tablet app version of the site.

On December 21, 2012, Gangnam Style became the first, and so far the only, YouTube video to surpass one billion views.

On March 21, 2013, the number of unique users visiting YouTube every month reached 1 billion. A new milestone in the history of YouTube.

Looking at the history of YouTube

It’s amazing how far YouTube has come over the years, especially considering it’s short history on the internet, and it’ll be even more interesting to see where it’s going in the future. As it stands, the video giant really has no big competitors, and seems to continue to expand without ever slowing down. Of course, just being big doesn’t mean that everyone on YouTube is making a lot of money, but it does mean that there are a lot of opportunities for those willing to look.

It’s no wonder that companies, small and large, are looking at YouTube as an amazing business opportunity, offering a cheap and inexpensive way to reach customers, and gain loyal brand followers. Of course, all that is for nothing, if you can’t actually get visitors and viewers to your videos, but as it stands, it’s practically a must to at least look at.

I hope you enjoyed this little lesson in the history of YouTube! As always, stay tuned for future blog posts.